Unfinished Visions: Silent Film & Sightless Radio

Archival cinema, projection design and experimental radio art come together in a program examining how images and sound can be reconstructed, interrupted and reinterpreted over time. Unfinished Visions: Silent Film & Sightless Radio takes place Sunday, July 26 at the Deering Estate Theater in Palmetto Bay. The free program is part of Subtropics: Audible Fields at Deering Estate, a five-part series curated by composer and intermedia artist Gustavo Matamoros that explores listening through experimental music, moving image, radio art and spatial sound practices.

The program features a multiscreen presentation of film materials connected to Sergei Eisenstein’s unfinished ¡Que Viva México!, drawing from surviving fragments and related documentary materials. The projection environment is developed in collaboration with Deering Estate resident artist Freddy Jouwayed, whose work translates archival film into an immersive spatial installation shaped by the theater’s updated projection, lighting and surround sound capabilities. Film historian and archivist Bruce Posner, who spent many years in Miami, contributed to the restoration and reconstruction of the ¡Que Viva México! materials.

The program also includes Gregory Whitehead’s If Everyone Waits, a radio art composition for voice, instruments, radio noise and very low frequency transmissions. Together, the film and audio works explore montage, fragmentation and transmission, connecting early experimental cinema with contemporary sound and media practices while foregrounding listening as an active, spatial experience.